Autonomous vehicles (AVs) require comprehensive and reliable pedestrian trajectory data to ensure safe operation. However, obtaining data of safety-critical scenarios such as jaywalking and near-collisions, or uncommon agents such as children, disabled pedestrians, and vulnerable road users poses logistical and ethical challenges. This paper evaluates a Virtual Reality (VR) system designed to collect pedestrian trajectory and body pose data in a controlled, low-risk environment. We substantiate the usefulness of such a system through semi-structured interviews with professionals in the AV field, and validate the effectiveness of the system through two empirical studies: a first-person user evaluation involving 62 participants, and a third-person evaluative survey involving 290 respondents. Our findings demonstrate that the VR-based data collection system elicits realistic responses for capturing pedestrian data in safety-critical or uncommon vehicle-pedestrian interaction scenarios.

翻译：自主驾驶汽车需要全面且可靠的行人轨迹数据以确保安全运行。然而，获取诸如横穿马路、近碰撞等安全关键场景，或儿童、残疾行人、弱势道路使用者等非典型主体的数据，面临着逻辑和伦理上的挑战。本文评估了一种虚拟现实系统，该系统旨在受控、低风险环境中收集行人轨迹和身体姿态数据。我们通过与自主驾驶领域专业人员的半结构化访谈，证实了此类系统的实用性，并通过两项实证研究验证了系统的有效性：一项涉及62名参与者的第一人称用户评估，以及一项包含290名受访者的第三人称评估调查。研究结果表明，基于VR的数据采集系统能够在安全关键或非典型的人车交互场景中，有效激发真实反应以捕捉行人数据。